For many years, users of photographic and video camera equipment and accessories and other delicate objects have created "nests" to hold and protect the objects in portable carrying cases by cutting holes or recesses in sheets or blocks of foam elastomers or plastics to fit the particular objects to be stored and protected.
These methods have two serious shortcomings:
1. The manual skills required to achieve a satisfactory fit to the sometimes complex shapes. PA1 2. The needs and configurations desired may frequently change, requiring the purchase of new materials and re-cutting and re-fitting for the new use.
In recent years it has been a common practice to ship delicate articles in "nests" of resilient or crushable material such as plastic foam either premolded to conform to the shape of the object or using "foam-in-place" methods. These methods have served well when used for production quantities of fixed product configurations or for one-time shipment of objects of quite variable shape.
There has long been a need to create a new packing method which can be used with little user skill and training to produce a nesting system which conforms easily to the shape of the objects to be stored or shipped and which can be readily re-formed and configured to fit a different combination of objects and shapes.